Remember the "Libertarian Democrats"?

Today in Slate, Dave Weigel
interviews former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who’s
likely to make a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in
2016. Schweitzer was beloved by the “libertarian
Democrat” crowd back in the Bush years, when the Netroots were
looking westward for new approaches to politics. Almost a decade
later, the governor is sounding the same notes: anti-war,
pro-privacy, in favor of civil liberties, and—this is where the
libertarian leanings melt away—generally interventionist on
economics. (He does score some points hitting Obama for being a
corporatist, but he doesn’t seem very interested in anti-statist
alternatives.) The Second Amendment doesn’t come up in the
conversation, but Weigel notes in his intro that Schweitzer has a
history of
favoring gun rights. (There are some
exceptions to that.)

Read the interview and decide for yourself whether
Schweitzer meets my old criteria for “How
to Be a Half-Decent Democrat.” He certainly sounds better than
the frontrunner for
his party’s nomination, not that that’s a high bar to clear. Sounds
better to me, that is; among Democratic voters, he’s polling

below 2 percent.